THE CONNECTORS: Conversations with visionaries, investors and entrepreneurs from North Texas who are making a mark in the business world.

Dallas entrepreneur George Baker is heir to a parking dynasty. He's the son of Fred Baker, one of the founders and president of Parking Company of America-Dallas. The 36-year-old has stayed in the family business but with a twist. He launched ParkHub, a startup that makes it easier to track parking analytics and process payments.

Baker was inspired in part by his entrepreneurial family. His grandfather moved from Paris to the U.S. to become chef at Dallas' Old Warsaw restaurant. He later opened a restaurant called Patry's. His uncle opened a Dallas restaurant years later with the same name. As a kid, Baker's mom and dad would send him to the family company's parking lots to pick up trash, pull weeds and wave parking flags. When he graduated from college, Baker saw the pitfalls of parking management firsthand when counting money that customers stuffed into the lots' metal boxes and auditing with paper and pen.

ParkHub leases parking management software. It also leases and sells a smart sensor called Pulse, which detects cars as they enter or exit the lot, and Prime, a handheld iPhone device with a credit card scanner. Its hardware and software were built by Dialexa, a Dallas design studio.

ParkHub has 19 employees, including three contractors. Its office is in Deep Ellum, in the former studio of hidden-camera reality TV show Cheaters. Its software is used by parking lots at sports arenas, concert venues and stadiums across the country.

In a recent interview, Baker said he's planning ahead for the auto industry's next major shake-up -- self-driving cars. His responses have been edited for brevity and clarity.

What inspired you to get into the parking business?

I was literally born into it. I was 12 years old and trying to earn some extra cash for baseball cards or whatever it might have been. I was put to work at a young age on the parking side, whether that was maintenance in parking or an extra hand for an event downtown.

How did you come up with the idea for ParkHub? What did you learn when you were working for your family's company?

Effectively, I was this big babysitter. There was a clear identifier when I was at the office at 8 a.m. and stayed till 6 p.m. There was a direct relationship between the revenue turned in, and it's because, if I'm not there, they [employees] may not report a car. They may lift up the gate. There's a lot of opportunity for them to thieve. And you can't manage what you can't measure.

The whole premise [with ParkHub] is to digitize all of the parking transactions, whether they're cash transactions, credit card transactions or my pre-paid transactions. And now you can start measuring attendant performance, you can start measuring asset performance. You can start measuring what forms of payment are being accepted or "Why am I still a cash-heavy business?" You can start making educated decisions like, "OK, maybe we should start looking at our signage" or "we're seeing this trend of people coming in early, so let's do an early bird special."

Why not keep working in your family's parking business? What inspired you to say "I want to do my own thing?"

I always wanted to separate myself from entitlement. I'm an Eagle Scout. I believe a lot in leadership and solid foundations and pedigree, and so I wanted to do something on my own and not have that reliance and the strings attached.

How did you get your first client?

I went to American Airlines Center, local home of the Dallas Mavericks and Dallas Stars. They loved the device. They loved the idea of taking credit cards out in the parking lots, and they loved the idea of validating parking passes because they couldn't do that. ... But they said, "You have to get TicketMaster on board." So I thought, "Great." So I flew to Hollywood to their offices. I told them what I had. I don't think they really understood what I had at the time, but we entered into a contractual relationship.

What was your first major milestone that gave you confidence that ParkHub would succeed?

Shoot, I don't know if it would be getting a call from the Super Bowl committee two weeks before the Super Bowl this past year, asking us to power the Super Bowl. That was obviously very powerful, but getting the Cowboys' business was monumental. I think it's a lot of little wins that add up to a big, big win.

What will the future of parking look like?

I feel that the autonomous vehicle will be introduced in the marketplace in the parking sector within the next three years. The reason for that is private parking is private property. It doesn't require a lot of regulation or legislation.

Your modern Land Rovers, Mercedes, Jaguar, Tesla, Volvo, have valet parking modes. You can go into an empty space or a parallel parking spot and hit a button and the car parks itself, but you have to identify where the spot is.

Now think about if there's a source that's able to tell you where spots are available. Now you're arriving at American Airlines Center, and you pull into the garage and you literally get out of your car and walk into the stadium, and the car goes and parks itself. As you're leaving, you summon your vehicle, and it comes and it goes into valet mode. I think that's here before you know it.

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George BakerAge: 36Education: Bachelor's degree from University of Arizona at Tucson in regional development/city planningHometown: Born and raised in Highland Park; lives in Highland ParkFamily: Wife Chelsey, 3-year-old son George II, and 11-month-old son Kuper